... To Keep Warm

Rabbi's Notes - February 2002

by Rabbi Margaret Holub

Barbara Myerhoff, of blessed memory (to me personally, since she was my teacher and inspiration right at the time I was thinking of becoming a rabbi, as well as to the world) tells a story in her gorgeous book, "Number Our Days," that I don't think is supposed to be funny. But it is. "Number Our Day" is an ethnography of a Jewish senior center in Venice LA. There was a quarrel between Sadie and Anna, two members of the Center. Other Center members quickly sided with one or the other of the main combatants. It had come, if not quite to blows, to a head. Words were said. The Director, desperate to fix the problem, asked an outside psychologist to come in and mediate. As Myerhoff describes the mediation session, the old people were shouting at each other, and the visiting doctor sounded ludicrous as he begged people to listen and let each other speak:

"'I think we all recognize that everyone here has something worthwhile to say," [said Dr. Cohen.] "Every one of us is a valuable, unique individual, whose opinion is worth hearing, for its own sake, the son of a rabbi or the son of a butcher.'"'Doctor, don't say this," said Jake. 'There are people here you don't want to hear from.' "The story has a happy ending. You should read the book. I mention it here because of the chapter title: "We Fight to Keep Warm."

Myerhoff writes about how differently different people relate to fighting, to expressing anger and aggression out loud. Center people, writes Myerhoff, "experienced their connections with each other most convincingly and easily through the expression of anger and conflict. Anger is a powerful indication of engagement between people, the very opposite of indifference. It may be regarded as the most dramatic proof of responsiveness and caring."

I've been thinking lately about how much I dislike people shouting at each other. I don't even like it in playful engagement over words of Torah. I am most comfortable when people take their turn, when people listen carefully and consider their words. I like softening words to be said before and after a hard statement. I like a gentle prayer service, with way more kisses than pointing fingers. I like people to smile and nod quietly through a meeting. Sometimes when I say these things to people they quote back to me the classic dinner table scenes in Annie Hall, as though to prove that real Jews have to yell at each other. I didn't grow up under a roller coaster (even if sometimes it felt like I did!) My parents are from the Midwest, not New York. And I am uncomfortable with people fighting, even in good spirit, in front of me.

I don't think I am alone in this. But I also know that there are other good folks from the under-the-roller-coaster school of personal conduct. People have very different levels of comfort with overt conflict. When I think over the years of our community, I can see that different styles have prevailed at different times. There have been periods of confrontation. I can recall heated exchanges about all sorts of things, and people saying that they enjoyed them. Sometimes the heat has gotten personal -- people have shouted at each other and pointed and stomped out. That stuff drives me crazy. I've done everything in my limited power to repress it, in myself and in all of you!

This predilection of mine is on my mind because of the heartfelt plea from many of you that we as a community gather to talk about Israel. We'll be starting with a community conversation that you will have received a flyer for and will be followed by some sort of forum or series of speakers. Needless to say, if I had my way, we would all sit in silence and just think, then bow to each other and walk out of the room. Or we would go around in a circle and each say three words! I've written in earlier columns about how uniquely difficult it seems to be for people to listen to each other about Israel. I dread a lot of shouting, a lot of pontificating, a lot of finger-pointing. But hey, maybe this is something I need to get over.

There are words in the Talmud about how it is worse to shame someone in public than to murder them, how the sages should say little and think much and so on. But the Talmud itself belies this advice -- it is thirty-six volumes of sages shouting at each other. It is one five-hundred-year-long argument. I think that the matter of shouting is a genuine question of Jewish ethics, one to which there may not be one right answer.

At the community meeting we had in October, many of you spoke eloquently about wanting to turn to others in the Jewish community for support and guidance through the challenging political times we are in. There was a strong consensus that we want to talk more with each other, especially about difficult and controversial subjects that weigh heavily on us. Some spoke of talking and learning about Israel in particular; others spoke of 9/11 and its aftermath. I was truly delighted and touched that people want the Jewish community to be one of the places they turn, for information, for conversation, for analysis, for support, for direction. I feel that way too, more and more strongly.

Now comes the challenge of actually creating the settings in which that exchange can happen. And it seems like an apt moment to talk for a second about talking, maybe even before we take up the topics of Sharon and Arafat or Osama and George W. How would you like for us to conduct ourselves with each other? When we disagree with each other, how would you like to see us express it? Are you comfortable with interruptions? With extended speeches? With raised voices? With people walking out? Should we have ground rules? Should we take turns? Should we have time limits? Decibel limits? Do you trust certain sources of fact? Of analysis? Of advocacy? What kind of background would an "expert" need to have for you to believe what he or she says? These may seem like trivial questions next to the question of settlements in the West Bank or bombing Afghanistan. But, as the old vaudeville shtick has it, "I let my husband make all the big decisions, like whether or not we will invade China. I just make the little ones, like where we'll live and whether or not we'll have children." We may not have much say in the big questions, like what Sharon or Bush does. But we do have some say in how our own community conducts itself in the meantime.

I actually think that if we can be a community in which divergent opinions about Israel in particular, and the rest of the earth as well, can all be held and expressed and examined in relative intactness, we will have contributed something to the whole hurting world. My objective test of our success in this would be: right- and left-wingers (if those categories even still mean anything in today's conflicts) warmly greeting each other with a "Gut Shabbes!" Rightists and leftists celebrating each other's birthdays, sitting down for coffee together when they run into each other, telling each other jokes, apologizing if they think they hurt each other's feelings… And if we can actually learn from each other while we express ourselves, considering the merits of words said by people who disagree with us, we will have created a little slice of the World to Come. An objective test of this? That sometime after one of these conversations, you find yourself thinking, "I may not agree with so-and-so's point, but now I can really understand why a person would hold it." Or, "After so-and-so said that, it made me rethink my own position…" Let's be at least one place on earth where coexistence is a reality. If you have ideas about this, please share them (gently!)

© 2002 Rabbi Margaret Holub

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